How would you know?

I was working late the other day. The boss was still in the office. The nature of our jobs sometimes requires that. The particular place where we work requires something else of us as well: he and I are both believers. We are Christians. We chose to become Christians long before we took our respective jobs here, but we would not have chosen this location in which to work if we had not already chosen to follow Christ.



My boss had collected his briefcase, coat, and the remains of his lunch. I heard him say, "Good night, see you tomorrow" or something equally innocuous. I realized that it was nearly dark outside and that the workday should have ended more than an hour ago. I busied myself with collecting papers, shutting down the computer, and exiting my office. As I locked my office door, I noticed the boss's office was still open. As I walked through the lobby, I saw that his coat, briefcase and lunch were sitting on the desk. The light was on. The boss was nowhere to be found.



It had been a few minutes since his goodbye, but I presumed he had stepped into the restroom before his brief walk home. I collected my lunch from the office fridge, signed out, and put on my coat, rather more slowly than normal. The boss was simply not in the office, but neither had he left for home.



As I exited the front gate of the campus, I thought, "Heh. Maybe the rapture happened."
(Briefly: I Thessalonians 4:16 - 17 For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. The rapture is the time when Christians--those who are saved by the grace of Christ's death on the cross--are taken from the earth to live forever in heaven. The time when this will happen is not known, nor is the timing known: what must happen first. One thing that will take place: wars and rumors of wars.)



As I mentioned in the beginning, I am a Christian. If the rapture had actually happened, I would not have been Left Behind. I wasn't really worried...then a much more sobering thought occurred to me.



How would I know?



I live in a part of the world where the Muslim call to prayer sounds five times each day. The number of Christian churches in this part of the world are numbered in the single-digits per major city (if one is even available for local citizens).  In some lands, Christians can choose to be identified as such on their government identification, and officially should fear no reprisal. The reality is, though, that Christians who are natives of this region often keep their faith from their family and friends for a little while. If those closest to them do not know of their faith, how likely is it that I will know, as I see them only at the grocery store or on the bus to the mall?



Had the Christians in this region...in my city...suddenly been "caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air", the effect on daily life would have been minimal. A wife missing from this building; a husband missing from the office; perhaps an entire family might be gone here and there. Governments would still have their personnel in place. Stores could still open; transportation would run without a hitch. Teachers would be in their classrooms to greet the children that arrived that morning. What would those teachers tell the children about the disappearances?



Never figured out where the boss went that day, but the feelings remain a week later: feelings of despair—so few believers here in this region of the world; feelings of hope—that while the time grows short, time still remains; feelings of longing—how would they know, unless someone tells them?